Sunday, June 12, 2016

NSA Planning To Exploit 'Internet Of Things' Including Biomedical Devices

The post might appear from the headline to be aimed primarily as a US audience, but with US Government Surveillance now global and The Internet sliding its tentacles into domestic appliances, cars and even the plumbing in our houses it affects us all.

The Internet of Things in a Big Brother society (Image source: satiztpm)

We learn via whistleblowers that the USA's The National Security Agency (NSA) is exploring the potential of the so called 'Internet Of Things' as a means of gathering data worldwide. One area of particular interest to the government snoopers is internet-connected bio - medical devices like pacemakers, according to the source
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“We’re looking at it sort of theoretically from a research point of view right now,” Richard Ledgett, the NSA’s deputy director, said at a closed conference on military technology in Washington on June 10. Biomedical devices could provide nformation helpful to the NSA’s obsessive fascination with the idea of using 'big data to build computer models of group behaviour. This kind of thinking shows a failure to distinguish science fiction from reality, but that is a well know mental defect in many silicon valley idiot - savants, and paranoid control freakery is de rigeur for members of national security organisations.

When asked if the entire scope of the Internet of Things — billions of interconnected devices — would be “a security nightmare or a signals intelligence bonanza,” he replied, “Both.”

“As my job is to penetrate other people’s networks, complexity is my friend,” he said. “The first time you update the software, you introduce vulnerabilities, or variables rather. It’s a good place to be in a penetration point of view.”

In choosing the most effective ways exploit different new devices, the NSA has to prioritize its resources, which are usually focused on the “bad guys’” tech of choice rather than popular gadgets in the U.S., Ledgett explained. This should have prompted the question, "Then why not focus on the bad guys rather than spying in everybody?" Perhaps nobody asked because they knew an answer would not be forthcoming.

When asked why the agency was looking at spying on ctizens through washing machines and TVs when they could not break the security on a terrorists iPhone Ledgett explained the NSA wasn’t able to help the FBI crack the iPhone of the San Bernardino shooter, because NSA had not yet invested in exploiting that particular model of phone. “We don’t do every phone, every variation of phone,” he said. “If we don’t have a bad guy who’s using it, we don’t do that.”

In other words, "We spy on everybody and hope our prsing of Big Data throws up something suspicious." In that case one would think one of the most popular cell phines in the world would be a priority. but then it has often been said that Military Intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

October 2016: In a last ditch effort to block Obama's plan to allow the US Commerce Department to hand over oversight of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to a multi-stakeholder community - which includes the technical community, businesses, civil society and foreign governments - 4 state attorneys went to a Texas federal court alleging that the transition, in the absence of congressional approval, amounts to an illegal forfeiture of U.S. government property. Confirming once more that under Obama's Presidency the judiciary and legal system have been totally politicised, their case was thrown out on a technicality.

Cellular Technology: Can Governments Use It To Rearrange Your Brain
The controversies around cellular technology and the cellular masts or towers that make up the network grids just will not go away. It is not just the issue of do cellphone damage brain tissue that concerns us now, but certain rumours about what might be transmitted from the masts into the electro-magnetic mush that surrounds us all.